A take: Nic Dowd had a large and unappreciated role in getting Ovechkin to the goal record this season.

By the Numbers

On-ice percentages

Isolated Impact by HockeyViz

About this visualization: This image by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows how the player has impacted play when on the ice. At the top of the image is the team’s offense (even strength at left, power play at right) and at bottom is the team’s defense (with penalty kill at bottom right). In each case, red/orange blobs mean teams shoot for more from that location on the ice, and blue/purple means less. In general, a good player should have red/orange blobs near the opponent’s net at top, and blue/purple blobs near their own team’s net at bottom. The distributions in middle show how the player compares to league average at individual finishing, setting up teammates to score, and taking and drawing penalties. The number at center is Synthetic Goals: a catch-all number for the player’s impact.

Player Card by All Three Zones

About this player card: This image from Corey Sznajder of All Three Zones shows how the player compares to league averages in different microstats in the defensive, neutral, and offensive zones. Blue bars mean the player has a higher rate in that statistic compared to league average, and orange means a lower rate. The numbers are Z-scores, also known as standard deviations, indicating how far the number is from league average, where more than two standard deviations means the player is on the extreme edge of the league.

Player Card by Evolving Hockey

About this player card: This card from Josh and Luke of Evolving Hockey compares the player to league averages based on their impact on on-ice statistics. GAR means “goals above replacement,” where “replacement” means an average player called up from the AHL. xGAR is the same figure but assuming league-average goaltending. The numbers at top are the player’s percentile ranks overall and then for offense and defense alone. 

Player Overview by NHL Edge

About this visualization: The NHL’s advanced statistics program, Edge, tracks player and puck movement. At left are the player’s numbers in various statistics along with the average number for that same stat among players of the same position and the player’s percentile rank in it. At right is a radar chart for various statistics, where the bigger the shape the better the player performs in those measures.

Fan Happiness Survey

About this visualization: At three times during the season, RMNB conducted an open survey with readers, asking the following question for each player: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how HAPPY are you to have this player on the team?” The numbers above show the average score for the player in each survey period.

Slavoj Žižek on Dowd

Peter’s Take

We all know generally that some NHL players get used more for offense and some get used more for defense. But that zone optimization still occurs within a narrow distribution. The range isn’t that wide; almost everyone fits into a range of five to thirteen shifts per hour in one zone and/or the other.

That’d be nothing to Nic Dowd. He started 18 shifts per hour in the defensive zone this season, and that’s been the easiest workload of his time in DC. If you get the top 20 NHL forwards of this era (since 2007) by the ratio of defensive zone starts, Nic Dowd is four of them.

And so we expect Dowd to get smoked, to see opponents control play and outscore the Caps when he’s on the ice, because opponents are primed to do so. Except they don’t. Despite starting so many shifts away from the opponent net, the Caps generated an equal amount of shot attempts and came out even better when weighted by shot quality. The actual goal total was 37-35 for the bad guys, but that’s not so bad.

It’s hard to think of a lunch-pail grinder as an extraordinary hockey unicorn, but that’s what Dowd is. Literally no one has a harder workload in the NHL —  and I’m using literally literally here — and he does it excellently. Over the past five years, that sacrifice powered Alex Ovechkin to the goal record as much as any one of Ovi’s linemates has.

I’ve seen people sometimes say Nic Dowd filled the spot Jay Beagle left so many years ago. I love Jay Beagle, but that’s wrong. Dowd has done even more with even less. He deserves his own spot in the defensive zone of our hearts.

Judy on RMNB

• Lone survivor of the peak Nick era of the Washington Capitals.
• With Duhaime and Raddysh, Dowd’s fourth line was expected to improve this season.
• We saw that in effect early on, as Dowd scored a shorthanded goal against Philadelphia.
• A c0uple weeks later, Dowd participated in the team’s first 5-goal first period in more than 16 years.
• Dowd, ominously, after a beatdown by the Hurricanes: “They’re a good team. It’s a tough building to play in. We’ve had a lot of history against each other, at least since I’ve been here. It’s always a war. They’re a high-shot-volume team. I think, at times, the shots are a little skewed because they’re shooting from absolutely everywhere, but also, that plays into their system and makes them very effective.”
• Toronto’s Matthew Knies hit Nic Dowd in the head. It was called incidental contact
• In Februrary, the Capitals become the first team with 10 or more 10-goal scorers. Dowd was among them.

Capitals re-sign Nic Dowd to two-year, $6 million contract extension

• • Then he chugged a beer. ‘Judy! Judy! Judy!’

Your Turn

Dowd is entering his late 30’s. Does his workload need to change in the final two seasons of his deal? If so, how?

Read Japers Rink’s review